What political concerns shaped politics during the Gilded Age?
1 Answer
The Gilded Age knew the emergence of both labor activism and corporate powers embodied by magnates nicknamed the "Robber Barons"
Explanation:
The Gilded Age is an expression coined by Mark Twain in an eponymous novel. The use of the "gilded" instead of "golden" clearly implies that the gap between the poor and the wealthy at that time was gigantic.
It was nicknamed the "twilight of the presidency" because Congress had more power than the executive power. Both industrialiation and urbanization led to the rise of massive trusts in the economy , they were owned by people such as Rockefeller, Carnegie or Vanderbilt.
Labor activism rose as well with the first the creation of the Knights of Labor and then the AFL(American Federation of Labor) and also the IWW which incorporated foreighborn unskilled workers. Massive strikes were organized for instance in 1877, and massive protests for example in 1886 in Chicago was also one feature of the period.
